Mastering by Going Through the Motions

This piece by Alison Sampson speaks to some things that I've been thinking about and living into on my journey.  Through reflection on her experience of playing hide and seek with her children, Alison reflects on what else she might master by going through the motions.

I have been reflecting on who I want to be and how I continue to become that person.  I think it often feels like we are going through the motions when we enter into actions that are aligned with the person that we are becoming.

Trust in God

TRUST IN GOD

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability . . .

And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually; let them grow, let them shape themselves without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could today (become) what time (that is, grace and circumstances acting on your own goodwill) will make tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of your believing that his hand is leading you,
and of your accepting the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Teilhard de Chardin

(Priest and paleontologist, written during WW11 where he chose to serve on the front as a stretcher bearer.)